Jeff Passino
ALEX, 20s to 40s
ALEX is shopping, in the dairy aisle at a Pavilion’s grocery store.
ALEX And here I thought the toughest decision I would make today would be to spend the extra dollar for organic milk or not, but then you want to know . . . what exactly? If we can get back together? And you are seriously not joking about this. You are not another dream or drunken hallucination. And you ARE doing this here in Pavilion’s. Okay.
Obviously, I have had a lot of time to think about this over the past . . . year. Has it really been a year? I guess a couple weeks shy of a year, technically, but it’s felt like a fucking eternity, so let’s just go ahead and round up to a year, shall we?
Yes. The answer is yes. I want to get back to what we had. I want to not feel this loneliness or carry around this heavy sadness anymore. I want someone to laugh with about all the stupid shit we say and do. I want to take someone out to eat, to the movies. I want to share the things I love and see them for the first time through new eyes. I want to come home at the end of the day and hear about someone’s day that I actually care about, ’cause Heidi, at work, if I hear one more story about her sister, so help me. But mostly I miss having someone there in bed with me at night. I miss running my fingers down your back and kissing you before I go to sleep. And then, in the morning, waking to see you still sleeping and then annoying the shit out of you ’cause we’ve slept too long and have to get going immediately.
So yes, I absolutely want to get back to all of that. I miss all of that so much, every day. And I have had so much time to realize a lot of the mistakes I made. I relied too heavily on letting my actions speak for themselves about how much I love you. I didn’t take the chance every day to tell you how beautiful I found you. It’s not because you needed it said or like the whole world was ignorant to the fact that you are a knockout, but because you deserve to hear that, every day, and I shouldn’t have kept it to myself. I obviously had my faults. I’ve still got most of them. Quite frankly, I’m still not sure how exactly I am supposed to stop farting in bed. Who goes eight hours WITHOUT farting? It is probably impossible and, if not, then I’m sure unhealthy to do so. That aside, I loved you too quietly. Which I understand the irony, as that was another big complaint about my farting. But I was scared to love you. I was scared you would leave me. And maybe in the end that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe that is why you left me? Maybe you left ’cause you were too scared of loving me? I don’t really know the answers there, do I? The point is that was a stupid thing for me to do, because no matter how much I would try to act, outwardly, that I wasn’t madly in love with you, it wouldn’t keep that from being a reality inside me, and so ultimately all I was doing was not letting myself live my truth. And that was stupid of me.
So do I want to get back to that time and fix all those parts? Yes, I do. Do I want to get back to having a relationship with the types of moments we shared? Yes, I do. Absolutely. Do I want to get back together with you? No way.
No way, because despite my obvious flaws and despite you being ridiculously good-looking . . . seriously, you’ve done something new with your hair and, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible before, it actually suits you better and is extremely sexy and making it very hard to stand my ground on all of this, but I’ve got to. Regardless, compliments to your hairdresser. Truly. Where was I? Oh yes . . . despite all of that, I was really pretty awesome to you. I took you to amazing places and gave you so many amazing first-time experiences. When you were sick I took you in, with no regard for my own health, and fed you a steady diet of soup, movies, and sleep till you were better. When you would ask me advice on major life decisions, I would give them but then push you to follow YOUR gut, even when that was the opposite of what I really wanted you to do. I wanted you to be and feel like the strong independent woman you are. When you were diagnosed as being allergic to EVERYTHING, I learned every piece of food you were allergic to and made sure there was always multiple things you could eat at my place AND I modified every recipe for every dinner I cooked so that there was no gluten, nuts, soy, dairy, citrus, or celery. So much so that it was as if, for a year, I was allergic and had to stay away from those things as well. By the way, I am sorry if standing here in the milk aisle for so long is causing you to break out in hives. I did a LOT for you. I did it because that is what my love told me to do for you. And in turn your love, what? Told you to stay away from me when I was sick? To get angry at me for not making certain decisions for you? To lie to me? To take advantage of me? To cheat on me? To just one day leave me, and ignore me, pretending that everything we’ve done and gone through never happened for a whole year. I’m sorry, a couple weeks shy of a year. Well I deserve better than someone who treats me like that. That is my truth.
Now if you will excuse me, my cocoa crisps deserve this organic milk.